


Returned

by autotunedd



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A mystery, Gen, M/M, There are only allusions to keith in this, future Sheith, gotta read the notes, how is he so beautiful and happy and supportive after everything he's been through, i just want to write about shiro, it's really just a conversation with adam, what goes on in his tortured noggin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19329520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autotunedd/pseuds/autotunedd
Summary: A snapshot of Shiro's homecoming in an alternate S7 where Adam never died and the Paladins return to an unoccupied Earth. Shiro has to grapple with his feelings for Keith as well as memories of his life with Adam.





	Returned

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, this is not a proper oneshot. This is the middle of a story I was going to write months ago. I wrote this entire thing in one sitting last year intending to write a proper beginning and end, but I lost the motivation and it hasn't come back, so I'm posting it as it is.
> 
> The set up is that--- Keith and Shiro obviously have feelings for each other at the end of S6 / beginning of S7 but it's complicated when Shiro is resurrected. They both have feelings but the clone issue makes it a little strange and murky and Shiro's going through a lot after his rebirth so to speak. He's trying to figure it all out. There was supposed to be an initial opening to this story of the Paladins homecoming to a peaceful Earth, delving into Shiro's conflicted emotions seeing Adam again (who seems happy to have him back). Like 'wow, holy shit, after everything I've been through, this guy I used to love is standing right in front of me. My old life is still here, what the fuck!'
> 
> This 'oneshot' is a conversation Shiro and Adam have a few days later. Shiro goes to Adam's quarters to talk. At some point he reveals that things are complicated with Keith and that he has feelings for him he's still trying to work out. That's where this snippet begins, with Adam asking about it, a little surprised and incredulous.

 

 

‘You don’t know what he’s done for me’.  
  
‘So _tell_ me’.  
  
‘It’s not that easy’.  
  
‘It should be,’ Adam answers. ‘When we were together, I always told you how I felt. It’s not a trick question, Takashi’.  
  
Shiro slumps. The thought of opening this box right now exhausts him, especially now. Adam is the last person on Earth Shiro wants to justify his feelings for Keith to. His complicated _feelings_ that he’s still trying to work out. Because there is something between them that he hasn’t figured out yet. Years of ambiguous feelings have been more fully realised of late, on both sides, but there have been setbacks for every step forward. Whenever Shiro sees pieces on the board, the set gets knocked over and the game reset.  
  
He was starting to feel things for Keith before his physical death. He was beginning to see him in a new light. There was an attraction there. And admiration. Respect. When he was reborn, he felt a flood of love and affection supplant what used to be the beginning of something. When he was brought back to life, it was like his feelings for Keith had grown without him, continuing on a natural course, growing steadily over time. When he first opened his eyes weeks ago, his consciousness returned to his body, Keith was leaning into him and Shiro had never loved anyone so deeply. It was the first thing he knew. And wasn’t it mutual? No one had ever looked at him the way Keith looked at him that day, like they were the only two people in the universe.  
  
Keith possibly reciprocating big new feelings creates new issues. It makes Shiro hesitant. Is this feeling of love really _his_? Do the interactions between them in his memories even belong to him? What about Keith? Didn’t he develop feelings for a clone? Shared memories aside, they’re not the same person. Not really. Keith developed feelings for another entity entirely.  
  
On the journey back to Earth in Black, Shiro shared a bed with Keith and they spoke without really saying anything. He was struggling to deal with the influx of new memories and feelings, trying to reconcile two lives into one. Keith thought physical contact might help ground him and it certainly did that. Keith kissed him unexpectedly and Shiro’s stress and fear lessened. That brief connection felt so tender and easy. It felt right. With the clone’s memories, Shiro knew it was their first kiss. That made it exciting. That made him feel alive again, like he wasn't living in someone else's memories. All the same, after the fact, he couldn’t help wondering if the kiss was meant for someone else. Like he was stepping into a dead man’s shoes and usurping the clone’s life, the way the clone had done to him. Isn't that wrong?  
  
They aren’t questions Shiro finds it easy to ask right now. He is struggling to get by, struggling to come to terms with everything he’s been through now that they’re all safe. Keith is the only person who can possibly understand, but the unresolved nature of their feelings means he’s keeping his distance for now. There are feelings he wants to act on and he thinks it’s mutual, but he doesn’t know if it’s _right_. He doesn’t want to make a mistake.  
  
‘So, tell me what’s going on with you and the kid?’ Adam asks again.  
  
‘He’s not a kid’.  
  
‘Anymore,’ Adam says. ‘He’s still a kid to me. Help me understand’.  
  
Shiro struggles to find the words.  
  
‘He saved your life,’ Adam steps in. ‘I heard about that. I know. Don’t you think these things you’re feeling could be gratitude? Maybe you’re confusing other feelings for romantic love? You’ve been out there a long time, Takashi. It’s natural to get lonely. It’s natural to reach out. I understand’.  
  
Shiro eases his tired body into a nearby chair, his mind dulled by this unreal conversation, this subtle attack on his own mind. Being in their old apartment is a shock to his senses. His mind is spinning. He can smell Adam’s cologne. He smells the same as he used to. So little has changed.  
  
Adam squeezes his shoulder from behind.  
  
‘You’ve been gone so long. I just want to understand’.  
  
Shiro doesn’t know how to answer him, or why he opens his mouth at all. What comes out is surprisingly emotional. Like a long-held breath, finally released. Some throwback to another life. Maybe he just wants Adam to stop speaking.  
  
_‘Adam’._  
  
This knocks down a wall between them, unintentionally, and Adam quickly speaks in the same emotional voice.  
  
‘I missed you, Takashi. Christ, I’m so glad to see you. I never thought I’d get to touch you like this. It doesn’t feel real’.  
  
Adam’s grip on his shoulder tightens and Shiro’s eyes drift close. Hasn’t he wanted to hear this for years? Some declaration of caring? Maybe not at the forefront of his mind but in the back, wasn’t Adam always there, telling him not to leave? He was always on the tarmac saying goodbye with misery in his eyes. At the time, Shiro would have done anything to change that. Anything short of staying behind. All he wanted back then was for Adam to love him enough. For him to miss him when he was gone.  
  
Shiro lays a hand over Adam’s and squeezes.  
  
‘Me too. I thought I’d never see you again’.  
  
‘ _Takashi’._  
  
Adam crouches beside the chair and touches Shiro’s forearm lightly. He smiles.  
  
‘I guess we did it again. The Miracle makers. You died and here we are, looking at each other. It’s impossible’.  
  
Shiro let’s himself be overwhelmed by this allusion to his past. When Adam first joined the Garrison, they were thrown together because of their drive and their talent. They had complementary gifts but when they worked together, they made the impossible possible. None of Shiro’s successes would have been so quickly won without Adam’s help. They were known as the miracle makers. They were a team.  
  
Adam pulls Shiro’s hand to his lips and presses a tender kiss to the back of it, and Shiro lets him because he’s so enamoured to feel it. Adam used to touch him like this. After long days teaching and working, they would meet in these same quarters and simply hold each other inside the door. One moment of tenderness to decompress and unwind. Or in fleeting moments in public, they would kiss a shoulder or a hand.  
  
‘This brings back a lot of memories,’ Shiro whispers.  
  
‘Good ones?’  
  
_‘Yes’._  
  
Adam stands and pulls Shiro up, guiding him into the kitchen. He leads him to a wall covered in photographs. It’s exactly as Shiro remembered it. Nothing has been drastically altered or added. There is one photo missing from the centre, leaving an empty square of paint in its place. Around it are photos of their life before Kerberos. Pictures of them together and alone. A picture of Adam with his own friends at a bachelor party. One of himself in the cockpit of a new fighter. Their lives were memorialised on this wall. Originally, they intended to cover the whole room with memories and mementos, but they never got around to it.  
  
‘You didn’t take them down’.  
  
‘I wasn’t ready’.  
  
‘It’s been years. You haven’t been with anyone else? Men must see this and run’.  
  
‘There were men, but they never stayed. What difference did it make to them if your picture was on the wall? Most of them knew you weren’t coming back. They just wanted to fuck. That’s all I asked of them’.  
  
Shiro flinches.  
  
‘I made rash choices when I was trying to cope with your death,’ Adam confesses. ‘So, the kid? I understand it, Takashi. If you needed that contact’.  
  
Shiro closes his eyes, feeling a well of frustration at this continued misunderstanding. This false equivalency, like Keith would ever be the same as a desperate fuck to feel better. He needs to say something against that. He needs to defend what he knows, but he is overwhelmed. A photograph of himself on the day he broke the orbital record stares back at him from the wall. It was taken during his final moments on the ground. In the photograph he looks young, smiling ear to ear. Adam is checking his suit. He remembers that day so clearly. He remembers the way Adam checked and double checked each strap; the way he pressed his forehead to his helmet and said through the glass, _‘don’t go crazy up there. I want you back on the ground alive and well’._  
  
Shiro falters. A swell of latent love and gratitude blow back on him like a breeze.  
  
His eyes fall on the blank square once more.  
  
‘There’s a photo missing. Which one?’  
  
‘I’ll show you’.  
  
Adam leads him through their old quarters into the bedroom. Crossing the threshold of the door, Shiro stumbles and stops. Everything is the same. Everything is where he left it. Some of his things are missing, but other things that belonged to him are still sitting on the dresser. One of his posters is on the wall. A certificate. A medal. It shocks him. What has Adam been doing all this time, living this way like a war widow? Or had these objects become so much a part of his life, he didn’t feel the need to take them down? Maybe he was just accustomed to them.  
  
Adam opens his bedside drawer and recovers the missing photograph. It’s the two of them at a rescue place. For a while, before Kerberos, they entertained the thought of living off Garrison grounds and getting a dog together. It was hard to balance them but Shiro had these bursts of passionate intensity for Adam and their life together. Amid the unstoppable drive to aim higher in his career, he sometimes entertained the thought of slowing down and living in quiet domesticity. It never lasted very long, and maybe each time Adam knew as well as he did, they would never follow through, but they were fun fantasies while they lasted. He smiles at the dog in the picture. Both on their knees on the linoleum floor, this small brown dog is frozen in time between them, tail wagging in excitement.  
  
‘God, I wanted this dog,’ Shiro whispers.  
  
‘He went to a good home,’ Adam tells him. ‘I checked a few weeks later. I couldn’t stand the thought of no one taking him’.  
  
Shiro grimaces. Letting that dog believe he had a chance at going home, only to see him put down would have been the icing on the cake. That would have been a microcosm of their own relationship and the way they kept forcing hope into the daydream, like air in a deflating balloon. They loved each other, but it wasn’t enough. The dog went to a good home, it was just a different home than theirs. Shiro hands the photograph back in recognition. Didn’t he do the same? Didn’t Voltron become his home? At least when he was a paladin, which he isn’t anymore.  
  
‘You keep this in your drawer?’  
  
‘It was hard to let go, the way things ended’.  
  
‘What does that mean?’  
  
‘I didn’t support you,’ Adam says quietly, ‘and you _died_. I had to live with that’.  
  
‘You warned me,’ Shiro answers without knowing why. ‘You told me It was dangerous. You were right. You shouldn’t feel bad about that’.  
  
‘But I do,’ Adam answers. ‘I knew you would go either way, whether I broke up with you or not. I knew it wouldn’t change anything. I should have seen it through but I was afraid. Your spasms were getting worse. You were struggling. I thought your condition was going to cause problems,’ he says. ‘I thought it was worse than you were letting on and you were being stubborn, that you were knowingly putting yourself at risk,’ he confesses. ‘All the more reason to have stayed together. If you were going to die, it should have been knowing someone loved you. I couldn’t stand thinking about that after they told me you were gone. That you died thinking I didn’t care’.  
  
‘I never thought that’.  
  
That’s the truth, Shiro realises. Losing Adam felt like a knife to the heart, but in some ways, it felt mutual too. Adam initiated the split but Shiro felt it coming long before it landed, so when Adam finally said the words, they sounded like his own. Adam’s refusal to support him on the Kerberos mission was the final nail in a coffin already sealed shut. They weren’t going to survive it but they still loved each other despite seeing the ending a mile off. Love lingers, even when it hurts. Shiro was still dreaming about Adam when he was a prisoner on a Galra ship. He dreamed about him for a long time, until he stopped dreaming altogether. He knew Adam’s love would similarly linger. While being tortured, he felt some of Adam’s love for him in the universe still.  
  
But maybe feelings of love and torture were always tinged with memories of Adam, because what did he just say? A familiar feeling rankles Shiro, of suppressed disappointment and shame. He frowns in recognition.  
  
‘You thought my condition was worse than I let on?’  
  
‘Wasn’t it?’ Adam asks. ‘You were always hiding it from me near the end. And you got clearance for the mission despite it. No other pilot would have’.  
  
‘I would never pilot _knowing_ I was compromised. I would never put other people at risk just to fly’.  
  
‘Not intentionally,’ Adam says sympathetically.  
  
It takes a moment for the implication to land and when it does, Shiro feels a new hurt, like a knife inching slowly into his chest. The guilt on Adam’s face tells Shiro something he’d never considered before.  
  
‘You thought it was pilot error’.  
  
Adam looks suitably ashamed and shrugs absently for lack of a better explanation. He looks sorry but it doesn’t make a difference. The Garrison told the world he killed his crew and Adam of all people, believed it.  
  
‘It’s what they kept saying’.  
  
‘You thought I killed my crew?’ Shiro asks heatedly. ‘My _friends?’_  
  
‘No,’ Adam answers. ‘I thought something had gone _wrong’_.  
  
‘Like a muscle spasm at the wrong time? A sudden _weakness?’_  
  
‘Shiro, that’s not fair. They were convincing with the spiel they rolled out when you went missing. They forged documents. They faked surveys to support their findings. It was a thorough job,’ he says heatedly. ‘I was _grieving_ for you. What did you expect me to do? Accuse the Garrison of lying because the Shiro I knew never made mistakes? You think an alien abduction is more believable than an unfortunate accident? We all make mistakes, Shiro. Even you’.  
  
‘I didn’t _make_ a mistake,’ Shiro says quietly. ‘I did everything I could to protect them. I tried to keep them safe’.  
  
Adam frowns deeply and his features seem to melt in sympathy. His voice comes out softer, dripping with regret and curiosity. Maybe he can sense the unspoken implications and the implied allusion to his imprisonment. They were abducted and Shiro kept them safe. He did what he could.  
  
‘I know,’ Adam says quietly, gaze falling to Shiro’s missing arm.  
  
‘No,’ Shiro answers honestly. ‘You don’t’.  
  
How much did Holt tell Adam when he first returned to Earth? So much of what happened was classified and still is. There are things no one knows. Things Shiro buried deep down inside himself so nobody in the universe would ever find them. Shiro flinches at the mere reminder of their existence.  
  
Adam frowns in answer and his demeanour changes. Maybe now, he can see the cracks beneath the surface. Maybe these few words have illuminated the ocean of pain and stress Shiro has locked away since Kerberos. He has died and been reborn and his baggage has come with him. It’s still there, unresolved. All the simmering resentments and hurts from Earth, the agony of his imprisonment, the unceasing stress and pressure of trying to keep the Paladins and the Universe safe. Worst of all, the pain of being dead and replaced, and the memory of Keith begging for his life because Shiro retains those memories too. He told Keith he doesn’t remember what happened on the installation, but he remembers all of it. He wakes up drenched in sweat over and over, reliving it in exacting detail--- Keith’s trembling face pleading with him. _Shiro please--- I love you_.  
  
That’s real pain and it’s far removed from the hurt of a break-up or knowing someone he loved believed the worst in him. Adam thought he killed his crew. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a small disappointment, but Shiro has felt himself falling apart at the seams, his sanity morphing into a precarious tower of cards. Each new card threatens to topple the deck. He can’t handle any more.

Adam steps closer and Shiro instinctively breaks eye contact. Adam whispers anyway.  
  
‘What happened to you out there?’  
  
Shiro wants to be honest. He wants Adam to know what he’s been through; all the things he has endured since they said goodbye to each other on the tarmac years ago, but where would he begin? How could Adam possibly understand? How could he say the right things? How could he begin to fix him and put his mind back together? And if he can’t do that, what’s the point in telling him?    
  
‘Nothing I wouldn’t go through again’.  
  
‘It was all worth it?’ Adam asks.  
  
Shiro’s answer comes without thinking.  
  
‘Yes’.  
  
For a moment, Adam’s lip quivers and Shiro is reminded of the chain of pre-break-ups; all the conversations they knew were pointing towards the end. Road stops along the way. All of them with a similar theme. _If you lose me, will Kerberos still be worth it? Is it that important to you?_ Each time, both of them knowing the answer. Only this time, Adam takes the answer with equanimity. He touches Shiro’s face gently, framing his cheeks with his palms and he speaks to him quietly, saying something Shiro wanted to hear _years_ ago.  
  
‘Then I’m glad for you,’ Adam says. ‘I’m glad you found something important out there’.  
  
‘Something _bigger_ than me’.  
  
Adam shakes his head.  
  
‘Your life was always bigger than you, Takashi. You never did anything for glory,’ he says. The next part comes out less easy. ‘Maybe you were always meant to end up out there. If the universe called out to you? Who was I to say no?’  
  
It’s hard for Adam to say so, even if he understands the good Shiro has done out there, part of him still reels from it. Shiro was instrumental in saving the universe, but part of Adam still smarts at the pain of coming second, even if it was to something bigger. Even if it was to the universe itself. Despite that, Shiro feels his sincerity. He feels it in Adam’s touch. It makes his head spin. He spent so much of those first few months apart, desperate to feel this again. Desperate to feel this touch on his cheek.  
  
He was so sure Adam had moved on. Adam, who gave him an ultimatum and followed through. Adam, who said only days before he left for Kerberos, _‘I love you, but I meant what I said. I can’t do this anymore’_. Adam, who always followed through on his promises. Adam, who had a clear head and explained with tears in his eyes that he deserved something better than waiting around in fear. Shiro had understood him. He _released_ him.  
  
But here they are, in the bedroom they used to share with each other and Adam has changed so little, if Shiro closes his eyes and reopens them, he can pretend he has travelled back in time. That Adam will dash past him, late for a morning class. The memories are so easy to retrieve with everything in his sight. It’s like the universe left this here; as if a higher power wanted him to step back into his life like an aching limb into a warm bath. He feels the ache in him lessen the longer he stands here. Wouldn’t life be easier here in the past? For a little while anyway.  
  
Maybe Adam sees him soften, because he draws him to the bed and sits him down. Shiro stares at his hands in his lap and the familiar carpet beneath his feet. How many times did he sit here in the dark, digging his fingers into his aching wrists? Before Kerberos, his pain was becoming so great, it was difficult to hide it. Maybe Adam was right to worry about him. He cared, after all. That was the reason he gave initially for breaking things off. He wanted them to be together, not separated by a solar system.  
  
Adam lays a hand on the back of his neck and Shiro closes his eyes at the touch and the weight of it. It feels so familiar to him, but distant still. So much has happened in the intervening years, it feels like time has folded in on itself.  
  
‘How do you feel?’ Adam asks.  
  
Shiro knows what he means. What is it like to be back in their apartment, to be back in this room? Does it bring back happy memories? Does it make all the nightmares in between fade away? Shiro opens his eyes and turns his head.  
  
‘What do you want?’  
  
‘Want?’  
  
‘To happen,’ Shiro clarifies. ‘Do you want us to---’

He trails off. It seems crazy to say the words. _Pick up where we left off?_ He has been back for days. They’ve barely spoken to each other in that time. Now he’s sitting on their old bed and Adam’s fingers are on his neck and what? They can’t jump back into things and pretend the intervening years never happened. They weren’t together when he left. They are not together now. _Keith_.  
  
Adam shrugs, with a sad, desperate smile. He pulls Shiro in and presses their foreheads together.  
  
‘Takashi. I don’t know anything. I’m still taking this in. I grieved for you and now you’re _here’._ He takes a shaky breath and for the first time, Shiro feels the emotion in Adam’s voice. He senses how difficult and overwhelming this is for him. They loved each other for a long time. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Adam whispers. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you’.  
  
Shiro turns his nose into Adam’s and feels his warm breath on his cheek. Something inside him cracks and something lost and desperate widens. He keeps his eyes closed because he’s afraid that if he opens them, he’ll see some resolution on Adam’s face. A desire to return to their old life, maybe. He’s frightened that he might agree, swept up in a wave of nostalgia for a time when he felt safe and unburdened by the enormity of _everything_. Even thinking about it feels like a betrayal of everything he’s done with Voltron; to all the ways his life has been made better _because_ he chose to leave.  
  
Deep down, maybe there is still a version of himself desperate for Adam’s validation. Desperate for Adam’s love. That wants to tell him everything. That wants to recount his stories and his fears and all the suffering he has endured. That wants Adam to be swept up in the details. That wants Adam to run a hand through his hair and tell him _everything will be alright, I won’t let anything hurt you anymore._

The clash of lives lived and roads not taken is overwhelming. His brain hops rapidly from one memory to another. But with all the intersecting lives meeting in Shiro's head, there is only one constant, one common face and feeling. So, Shiro tells the truth again because every time he does, it feels like a breath of clarity clearing his mind.

'I have feelings for Keith. I think I want to pursue them'.

**Author's Note:**

> The story was going to end with Shiro realising that his old life really is dead and gone (he always knew). Part of him revels in the stroll down memory lane with Adam because it takes him back to an older life where he had simple dreams and fears, trying to psychologically reset to a time before he suffered so greatly. But Keith was in that old life too. In fact, Keith has always been there. He's the one constant in Shiro's life and Shiro needs him to be there in the future too. So, the ending is a tentative step into an optimistic future and relationship between them. 
> 
> 6 months feels like enough time waiting for motivation to return. I didn't want this to simply go in the trash so I'm posting it incomplete unless someone can motivate me into writing the proper ending.


End file.
